Is Something Wrong With U.S. Milers?

A perfect storm of factors leads to a lack of fast times in 2013.

As runners line up for the first round of the men’s 1500 meters on Thursday at the USA Track & Field Championships in Des Moines, none of them will have the "A" standard for August's world championships. As one of those runners, Matthew Centrowitz, says, "it's more than likely no one's going to get it" in Saturday's final. Unless at least one runner possesses the "A" standard by July 20, the United States will send only one 1500-meter man to the world championships.

A year after Leo Manzano won the silver medal and Centrowitz came in fourth in the Olympics, how did this reality come to pass? Is it something to panic about?

The world championships “A” standard is 3:35.00. In a perfect world, at least three Americans achieve it. But the only American who currently has it is Galen Rupp, who ran 3:34.78 during the indoor season, but Rupp is running the 5000- and 10,000-meter races in Des Moines. Every other world championships event as long or longer than the 1500 has at least three American athletes with the “A” standard, including the women’s 1500, which has seven, five of whom are expected to race that distance in Des Moines.

There are other scenarios for U.S. team selection, outlined here, the most dire of which would have the USATF winner achieving a “B” standard (3:37.00) and no one in the next three spots having an “A.” In that case, that first place finisher would be the sole American 1500-meter entrant in Moscow.

The elite American middle-distance runners don’t expect any such nightmare scenario to happen. After the USATF Championships, the top four finishers will be free to pursue “A” standards until July 20. Two 1500s, in Paris on July 6 and Monaco on July 19, are likely to be fast single-file pursuits, and a plenitude of runners could be pulled under 3:35.00. There are lesser races in Europe between this weekend and July 20 that are still of high caliber.

Right now, the fastest 2013 outdoor times of men entered in the USATF 1500 belong to Will Leer (3:36.67), Russell Brown (3:36.79), Andrew Wheating (3:37.03), Manzano (3:37.04), Lopez Lomong (3:37.08), and Centrowitz (3:37.27).

Brown, who ran a 3:34.11 1500 in 2012 but was plagued by injury at the U.S. Olympic Trials and limped through his semi-final, says, “The ‘A’ standard really never crossed my mind this year.” He agrees with Centrowitz that no one will run the standard at the national championships. But, he says, "I think I or whoever else gets top three this year, they’re going to have no problem whatsoever. They’re going to get into Paris or Monaco or both, and when they’re in those races, given what they had to do to make top three in the first place, they’re going to run 3:34.”

He adds, “We’ll have had two or three major races where 11 ‘A’ standards will come out, with maybe eight of them being new, and a few smaller races with three or four ‘A’s.”

Brown's scenario assumes American runners can get into whatever European meets they want to run. While Centrowitz or Manzano, with their established international credentials, will have no trouble getting into the quick 1500s, an upstart third-place finisher at the USATF Championships might not have such a guarantee.

The men’s 1500 has one major anomaly that doesn’t face specialists at other distances. Many of their fastest and most competitive contests are at another distance, the mile. And although statisticians frequently do time conversation between the 1500 and the mile, which is about 109 meters longer, no mile times are recognized by the IAAF for 1500-meter qualifying purposes. Lomong and Centrowitz ran miles in 3:51 and change at the indoor Millrose Games and the outdoor Prefontaine Classic, and Centrowitz states, “I think 3:51 converts to 3:34.” Some would say 3:35. In any case, Centrowitz suggests, “Obviously, Lopez and I are capable of running the ‘A.’” Okay, but the IAAF wants to actually see you do it. Before July 20.

The limited time frame for pursuing the “A,” that July 20 deadline, is a sort of compromise in a fluctuating set of practices over the past decade that has sometimes seen qualifying extended almost up to the world championships or Olympics, but other times closed out at the end of the USATF Championships. In 2004, Grant Robison became an Olympian despite not even making the USATF final because he, along with Alan Webb and Charlie Gruber and no one else, had met the “A” standard that season.

As for the USATF Championships themselves, there is no recent history of “A” standards in the 1500 being achieved at the meet. Leo Manzano came close with a 3:35.75 last year (when the standard was 3:35.50), but since Alan Webb triumphed in 3:34.82 in 2007, no other winner has broken 3:40. Centrowitz won in 2011 with a 3:47.63. And it’s going to be quite warm in Des Moines.

There was no men’s 1500 at the adidas Grand Prix in New York in May, nor at the leading European meets thus far in 2013, Rome’s Golden Gala and Oslo’s Bislett Games, which has its historic Dream Mile – which, again, for qualifying purposes, doesn’t count.

Centrowitz observes that there aren’t many opportunities to run fast 1500s in the first half of the year. He and Brown mention the May 17 Oxy High Performance meet in Los Angeles as an event designed to produce quick times. But in multiple heats of the 1500, the best time of the day was 3:36.07 by Nick Symmonds, who’ll be seeking his sixth straight USATF title in the 800. “It didn’t go out as fast as everybody thought it would,” Centrowitz says of the featured heat at Oxy. “Everyone got into a single file line and it ended up being about 1:59 through 800. We were expected to run five seconds faster than that.”

“As a 1500-meter runner, 3:35 is a time everybody should be able to hit if you plan on competing at an Olympic Games or world championships,” Centrowitz maintains. “Last year at the Olympics, I ran 3:34 in the semi and 3:35 in the final and those can be looked at as tactical races. You should be able to run 3:35.0 or faster in a set-up race [i.e., Paris] to be able to compete as these major championships. We just haven’t been given the opportunity. The only shot we had at Oxy didn’t go as planned.”

To a runner like Centrowitz, what’s happened thus far in 2013 is preamble.

“Training’s been going well and I’m in good shape,” he says. He’s set personal bests for 800 meters and the mile this year. “As of right now, I’m just concerned about that top three spot at USAs,” he explains. “After that, we’ll re-evaluate and figure out which race looks good to go chase it [the “A” standard] and get it.”

The European season is “a lot of the reason why we train through these early season meets,” he explains. “That’s what we’re gearing up for, running fast and competing against the best in the world. Everything leading up to this was just races to sharpen up and got something under our belts and get ready for these races.”

Brown’s not worried about times just yet. After his Trials disappointment, his focus has been on “getting to the starting line in one piece. Second, it was focusing on the things that are going to make getting a top three [USATF] spot possible: working on tactics, working on closing speed, and working on pace changes.”

Because they’re occupied elsewhere on the USATF schedule, several runners who’ve been fastest in the 1500 this year – Rupp, Symmonds, and Evan Jager – won’t be in the 1500 in Des Moines. Nor will Bernard Lagat, who’s concentrating on the 5000.

Of last year's three U.S. Olympic 1500-meter runners, Brown states, “Matt’s looking pretty good, Andy [Wheating] is looking okay, and Leo [Manzano] is looking bad. Under normal circumstances, I’d say Matt’s got a really good shot, Andy’s got a pretty good shot, and Leo has no shot. But if I had to pick someone right now to win, I’d still pick Leo Manzano, because’s he’s just so good at showing up at USAs.”

Brown mentions Leer and Garrett Heath as being “on fire” and observes that he himself is “running fast,” but adds, “it’s just been so consistent with people making teams and people not making teams. There’s something that I clearly can’t figure out that these mainstays of the teams have figured out. It’s not about running well in the couple of months leading up, necessarily. It must be talent. But it’s more than that. They just have a really good mindset when it comes to going to USAs.”

Brown sighs, “I wish I knew what it is that Leo could tap into to show up when it counts. It’s the same thing that got him that silver medal.”

Coming full circle, what about that 3:35.0 “A” standard for the 1500? Is it harder than the standards for other events?

“It’s come down pretty steadily every year. What it indicates is that people in the 1500 are running faster and faster and it’s getting deeper and deeper,” observes Brown. “It makes it harder to get into good races, it makes it harder to win medals, but the 1500 also remains a premier event. It’s easier to make money, it’s easier to get attention and all the other things that you want in the sport. We’re always one of the last events at meets. It gives you a sense that what you are doing is really important all the time.”